A personal area network (PAN) is a computer network that allows different devices operating within a relatively close proximity to communicate with each other. Often, PANs provide communications between mobile telephones, personal digital assistants, and/or other digital devices that are carried by, used by, or even worn by a common user. PANs can also be used to support communications between different electronic components operating in a home, workplace or other relatively close environment. Examples of PAN protocols, standards and other technologies include (without limitation) IrDA, USB, FireWire, Bluetooth, Z-Wave, Zigbee, Body Area Network and many others. Many of these technologies include sub-families of protocols. The Zigbee (IEEE 802.15) family of wireless standards, for example, includes separate protocols for consumer electronics (RF4CE), building automation, health care, home automation, retail services, smart energy, telecom services and others.
Many devices and applications are able to simultaneously communicate on multiple personal area networks. A set top box (STB) or similar television receiver, for example, may have a need to communicate with a remote control using the Zigbee RF4CE protocol while simultaneously acting as a home control unit for monitoring and/or controlling lights or other electrical appliances using the ZigBee Home Automation protocol. Even though the two Zigbee protocols in this example share commonalities in their base layers, the differences in higher layers are usually substantial enough to prevent the two protocols from sharing the same PAN. Most implementations therefore use completely separate PANs for the different types of communications (e.g., a first PAN for Zigbee RF4CE communications and a separate second PAN for Zigbee home automation communications in the example above). This typically involves redundant transceivers to support the multiple networks, and/or some sort of time multiplexing wherein a single transceiver splits its time between multiple networks. In the latter case, it is likely that at least some communications on one PAN will be undesirably missed while the single transceiver is monitoring a different PAN.
It is therefore desirable to create systems, devices and methods that operate simultaneously on multiple personal area networks in an efficient yet effective manner. These and other desirable features and characteristics will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background section.